#frank stringfellow

For Mercy Street Advent: Silver and AU, A Discovery of Witches day.  Thank you for the prompt @jomiddlemarch​ and for also confirming that peacocks do actually figure into this story.

"I'm calling in that favor you owe me. Actually, I'm calling in all the favors you owe me," she said.

“I owe you favors already? That doesn’t sound like me.” Emma grinned at Mary as she rifled through her dufflebag, searching for the contraband candy and other assorted junk food that she had stashed there. Lights’ out for the campers had been thirty minutes ago, and the counselors were meeting up to “unwind” after the long day--which meant drinking, s’mores making, and other such shenanigans.

“I’m serious, Emma. Oh, hey, Cheeto me.” Mary caught the bag of Cheetos that Emma tossed her way and opened it in one practiced motion. “I need to know everything you can tell me about that Jed Foster.”

“Ah. Trouble in the health lodge?”

Mary rolled her eyes. “Only if you call him second-guessing every single decision I made trouble. He even asked me if I was sure I wanted to use that brand of calamine lotion on Hattie’s mosquito bites.”

“I’m sorry, I should have warned you about him. He’s a bit...prickly.”

“That’s the understatement of the year. You know what he told me? ‘I know more about these things than you.’ As if we’re not both pre-med and there’s really that many ways to treat a damn mosquito bite. What is his problem?”

Emma shrugged, opening up a bag of Sun Chips. “He usually works here with his girlfriend, but she got a fancy internship in LA instead this year. Didn’t even talk to him about it, so I guess he’s pretty pissed. He shouldn’t take it out on you, though, that’s not cool.”

Mary sighed, running a hand through her bobbed hair. “It’s not. At least he’s decent with the kids. That’s about the only thing that kept me from trying to beat him to death with an Ace bandage.”

“He’s nice once you get to know him, I promise. It just...takes a while.”

Mary considered her thoughtfully. “Samuel said the same thing. I guess that’s as good an endorsement as any.”

“Laaaaaaaaaaaay-deeeeeeeeeeees!” a new voice sang, and Emma watched as Anne Hastings strode into view. She had a tote bag emblazoned with various logos for Broadway shows slung over her shoulder, and from inside it Emma could hear bottles clinking. “I hereby declare this party started.” She took one strap of the bag off her shoulder and began to rifle through it. “What’s your poison? I’ve got wine coolers, Fireball, a little bit of peach schnapps--”

Mary made a face. “Got anything good in there?”

Anne fixed Mary with a withering look. “Excuse me, baroness, but some of us actually have to rely on our paltry counselor’s salary! I was a bit limited in my selections at the local excuse for a liquor store!”

“It’s okay, Anne. I’m sure the others will have something else if Mary prefers,” Emma said quickly, wanting to avoid an argument. She had seen the way Mary had bristled at Anne’s baroness comment, and how Anne’s eyes were glinting with annoyance. “Frank usually brings some Bud Light or something. It’s all good.”

“Fine,” Mary said after a second. Anne responded by reaching for a wine cooler out of her bag and taking a swig. “Come on, girls,” she said, linking arms with Emma and leaving Mary to bring up the rear. “The fire waits for no woman.”

They quickly made their way to the firepit where the other counselors were gathering. They walked quickly and quietly, not necessarily because they were afraid of being caught--the only real danger was if they woke up Mrs. Brannan, whose tiny cabin was right next to the dining hall--but because the act of sneaking around made everything seem so much more fun and exciting.

They were among the last to arrive. Samuel and Charlotte were there, sitting close together, Sam’s guitar propped against the log next to them. Emma saw Alice wearing tiny cutoffs and what was perhaps the tiniest bikini top known to man. Emma wasn’t sure how she wasn’t freezing her buns off. Anne immediately abandoned them when she spotted Byron, launching herself at him as if he were a soldier returning from war that she hadn’t seen in years. 

“How long has that been a thing?” Mary asked as she watched Byron shove his tongue down Anne’s throat. She turned away and reached for one of the Bud Lights that Emma had mentioned. She popped the top and took a sip, grimacing. “Beer is gross.”

“And yet we drink it.”

The arrival of Jed Foster caused both girls to turn towards him. He, too, was clutching a can of Bud that was currently sweating into his palm. A guitar was slung over his shoulder like a backpack. “Hey, Jed,” Emma said kindly.

“My dear Miss Green. How is life in the art barn?”

“Oh, you know how it is.” 

His eyes flickered over to Mary almost nervously. “Mary.”

“Jed.” She nodded at his guitar. “You play?”

“When the moment calls for it,” he said coolly.

All right, this was interesting. Despite her earlier animosity, Emma could see clear interest in Mary’s eyes as she gazed at Jed. Anne would say that Mary had a lady-boner for him, and Emma wasn’t entirely sure she was wrong.

“I’m gonna...get a drink,” she mumbled, leaving the two to work through their mutual sexual tension in their own time. She turned and almost immediately collided with a warm body that smelled of campfire and pine. She knew because her nose collided with his shirt.

“Woah!” Emma felt hands on her upper arms--she’d worn a tank top and was already starting to feel chilly, but the contact caused warmth to go straight through her--to steady her. “My bad. Sorry, Emma.”

“Henry!” There he was, wearing the same outfit as earlier when they’d been in the loft together, but now his sleeves were rolled up a little and he was barefoot. There was a band-aid on his thumb that hadn’t been there earlier. “What happened to you?”

Henry shrugged. “Little disagreement with a bee. Jed and Mary fixed me up. Can I get you a drink? We have quite a selection. Beer, or beer. Or...” he grinned and held up another six-pack, already half gone. “Beer!”

“Anne brought some stuff, but I think she’s...busy.”

“That’s one word for it. Has she worked here long?”

“Yeah, this is her...” Emma tried to think. It was a little hard to focus when he was looking at her like that, the firelight shining on his face. “Fourth summer? Fifth summer? I can’t remember. Fourth, I think. She started when she was like seventeen.”

“What’s the deal with the accent?” he asked, lowering his voice. “Like, is it an act, or...”

Emma laughed. “I can see why you’d think so, but it’s actually real. She’s English. Or half English, at least. I can’t remember which parent.”

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!”

Henry winced as Byron’s voice rang out through the camp. He had climbed up onto a stump just outside of the circle of logs around the fire and held one of Anne’s bottles high above his head. “Isn’t he worried about waking the kids?”

“Byron doesn’t worry about anything.”

“Your attention please!” Byron bellowed. “Counselors of our beloved Camp Green Wood! Another summer has begun! Another summer of camraderie, friendship, and shenanigans--”

“Get to the fuckin’ point, Hale!” Frank called out, his arm slung over Alice’s shoulder. His words caused a ripple of laughter around the circle.

“Come on, let’s sit down. He does this every year and we need to be sitting for it, it’s a whole thing,” Emma leaned up to whisper in Henry’s ear. They made their way to the circle and sat down on the only remaining empty log, between Mary and Jed and Sam and Charlotte. It was a bit crowded by this point, so Emma ended up with her entire side pressed up against Henry. She said a silent prayer of thanks that she’d stolen a bottle of Alice’s signature Georgia Peach body spray.

Byron put a dramatic finger to his lips. In case the message wasn’t abundantly clear, Anne’s loud “Shhhhhhhhh!”, followed by “Shut the fuck up, Stringfellow!” brought about the desired dramatic silence.

Byron hopped off the stump, still brandishing the bottle. “I hereby declare the summer officially....” he paused for effect. “Started!”

He smashed the bottle against the stump like he was christening a yacht. It exploded, and the assembled counselors let out appreciative claps and cheers that almost drowned out Anne’s screech of “I didn’t put the tarp down! You said you’d let me put the tarp down! YOU ARE CLEANING UP EVERY BIT OF THAT BROKEN GLASS, BYRON HALE!”

“He does that every year?” Henry asked, his expression unreadable.

“Every year. And every year he forget to do it in a way that doesn’t release broken glass everywhere. You can set your watch by it.”

“This place is crazy,” Henry remarked, but he didn’t sound scared off by this fact. Someone was passing around a bag of marshmallows, and Henry took two and handed one over to Emma.

“What kind of marshmallow toaster are you?” he asked. “Let it get nice and golden, or put it straight in the fire?”

Charlotte handed Emma one of the marshmallow skewers, and Emma answered by sticking it right into the center of the flames. Henry looked aghast.

“No!” he cried. “No, no, wrong! You’ve got to do it slowly, gently...”

“It’s no use, Rev,” Charlotte said, nudging Emma with her shoulder. “I’ve tried to talk her out of it so many times. Our Emma just lives for chaos.”

Emma retrieved her burning marshmallow and quickly blew out the remaining flames, leaving it charred just the way she liked it. “You’re both wrong. This is the only way to do it.”

Sam had been strumming his guitar gently, tuning it as Jed worked on his. Mary perched nearby, eating a s’more and pretending she wasn’t watching. Sam gave one final strum and looked up. “All right! Any requests?”

“You promised me some Sheryl Crow,” Charlotte reminded him.

“Later, Char. You don’t start a set with Sheryl Crow.” Jed’s face implied that such a thing was ludicrous. Emma wondered how much trouble she’d be in if she throw her flip-flop at him.

Perry, one of the junior counselors, had been creeping their way. He tapped Sam on the shoulder and whispered in his ear.

“Huh? Oh, sure, why not.” Sam conferred with Jed for a moment before counting them off. “Okay, one-two-three-four.”

“When I wake up, oh I know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man who wakes up next to you!”

The song was met with a mix of groans and cheers. Henry looked up from assembling his s’more with precision and laughed. “This is definitely gonna be an interesting summer.”

Chapter 14

“What a pity,” Eliza said, sipping the overly dainty cut-glass cup of punch Byron had offered her with a flourish, as if to make up for the parsimonious serving. It was also missing any spirits, but her reticule was too small to contain even a petite flask.

“I could top it off with some whiskey,” her husband offered. “It won’t be cold though.”

“You’re very dear, but that’s not what I meant,” Eliza replied. The dancers whirled around the room, keeping pace with the musicians. They were a rather sedate group, but the violins were in tune and the bass kept good time. The room was filled with light; Alice Squivers must have bought all the tapers in Alexandria and the golden light was gentle, flattering, but it could not conceal everything. Jedediah’s brow was furrowed and Mary Foster was thoughtful, waltzing slowly, more graceless than if she had been clumsy before her illness. Dr. Diggs was tired and his wife was frustrated and Byron had the abstracted look she knew too well, for all that he was smiling at her. Eliza smiled back, as charmingly as she could, achieving her desired response.

“Mrs. Stringfellow. She’s in a white muslin so old and limp I don’t suppose you could even use it for bandages. And after I gave her the scarlet organza! It was so striking with her complexion, even without jewels,” Eliza said.

“She couldn’t hold a candle to you, my love,” Byron said gallantly. “Little Miss Green that was—I remember she once nearly eviscerated a solider with her hoops. Foster would never let her hear the end of it. He always fancied himself quite the wit.”

“I wonder,” Eliza said, ignoring his comments about Jedediah. Emma Stringfellow would have caught every eye in the ballroom in that red silk gown and that would have been worth something to a former belle, something precious. What had it been worth to refrain? Was the dress still laid in its box or had the younger woman even kept it? If her bitter-eyed husband had seen her in it, would he have smiled or snarled? Had Emma decided it was wiser to see what the dressmaker would give her for it in greenbacks? A ballgown could be worn to a ball; cash traveled.

“If it’s a mystery you mean to solve, I’m sure you will, Eliza,” Byron said.

SAGIOW.

they’re terrible, they’re awful, I love hating them, so you get both.

1. Love-to-Hate, although in different proportions. Frank Stringfellow is mostly just straight-up-hate; I don’t like Jimmy “Drunk Little Shit Loser” Green & think he’s horrible, but I just like having him around.

2.Do you know how long I started and squinted at this question?!

 I guess I ... ah, I’m fond? of Jimmy’s penchant for being a smartass in the face of repeated and inevitable failure. He’s a terrible person with bad politics, but “and I’m in here, fightin’ ‘em for time in the water closet” is perhaps my favorite line from the show. And I think Frank’s commitment to killing Bullen is really admirable, even if he fails. twice.

3. I’m weirdly attached to Alice and Frank’s Great Escape and Rustication with Quakers, in part because it’s the one time Frank isn’t blindly, terrifyingly sure of himself (even if his first instinct is Murder? Murder!). He’s still not sorry about anything, but ... I guess it’s a start? there was an attempt? As for Jimmy, it’s definitely the scene where he and Mr. Green are burying Captain Tallboots in the warehouse.

4. Frank improvises pretty solidly, I’ll give him points for that. (”Benjamin Franklin”, oh my god.) And, like his sister, Jimmy has a spiffy wardrobe. I’d steal his neckties. I think that’s the nicest thing I can say about him.

5. I think I knew I was going to love-hate or just hate them from the get-go, but special shout-out to Jimmy’s introduction, pointedly sitting down after Alice and Emma complain that at least Frank and Tom are out there standing up for something. What A Shit. 

6. Failure.